Charles Maland, City Lights

2 Chaplin’s Hollywood Roots (pp. 13-15)
- creative control
- independent film maker

3 Three preceding features (pp. 16-17)
‘aesthetic contract’ with his audience (p. 17)
- - 1. tramp persona
- - 2. romance
- - 3. inventive visual comedy
- - 4. pathos
- - 5. two contrasting sets of values

4 & 5 Divorce & Tax Problems, Hannah (pp. 18-26)

6 Challenge of the talkies (pp. 27-30)
- commitment to pantomime
- preservation of non-English audience
- hide English accent
- intellectual defense of purity of silent film
- compromise of City Lights

7 Refining a story (pp. 31-38)
Hollywood method: pre-production, production, post-production
Chaplin’s method of working
- one scene at a time
- preliminary editing during shooting
- intuitive method

Key concepts of City Lights (p. 34)
- blind flower girl & millionaire as key characters interacting w/tramp
- blind girl falls in love with tramp
- millionaire befriends tramp only when drunk
- ending: blind girl’s sight restored, meets & recognizes tramp

8 Production record in perspective (pp. 39-40)
- troubled production?
- long production
- shooting ratio: 39:1

9 Troubled production to November 1929 (pp. 41-50)
- flower stand scene
- Chaplin & Virginia Cherrill
- plan to reshoot with Georgia Hale

10 Production clarifies (pp. 51-54)
- last shooting: final scene

11 Chaplin, jazz age, & submerged autobiography (p. 55-61)

Cultural context: farewell to the 1920s (pp. 55-58):
- comparison to novels of the time: Fitzgerald & Dreiser
- prosperity & materialism
- ethic of personal gratification
- world of romance vs. world of extreme wealth
- power of romantic attraction and dynamics of world divided into haves & have-nots

Autobiography: (pp. 58-61)
- family instability and poverty
- wealth and celebrity as double-edged sword
- wealth and despair
- ability to cure a beloved woman
- unrequited love, possibility of mutual love relationship

12 Narrative structure (pp. 62-67):
- the "aesthetic contract" with Chaplin's audience
- interlocking comedy and pathos
- comedy and love story
- physical and psychological consequences of attachment to another

13 Opening scenes (pp. 68-76)

“Peace and Prosperity” statue (pp. 68-71)
- joke on talking pictures
- use of music
- tramp’s social marginality & hostility to him
- tramp’s gentlemanly side & aspiration to gentility
- tramp’s outfit
- feminized dimension
- pragmatic realization of his place in the world
- survivor

art store scene (pp. 71-74):

flower stand scene (pp. 74-76):
- world of romance
- key motifs: flowers and song

14 Contrasting moral universes (pp. 77-87)

- the flower girl’s world (pp.. 77-79):
- costumes
- courtyard

the millionaire’s world (pp. 80-85):
- his house: set design
- clothing
- exterior of house

15-16 Final sequence (pp. 88-103):
- musical score
- hand motif
- contrasts of worlds
- location of flower shop
- how flower girl imagines her benefactor
- newsboys
- the rose
- silence
- final shot/reverse shot sequence
- coin and flower
- long shot, medium close-ups, close-up
- open ending, black screen